Inside the loop
by GatoProgramador
Summary: Just a short sci-fi story that came out of nowhere :P


It was a hard day at the office, she didn't remember the last time the company servers were down. She and her team, Mark and Evelyn, spent almost an hour (that felt like 3) finding the cause of the disruption and restoring the services. After everything was up and running she asked both guys to leave and enjoy the weekend. However, she stayed one more hour just to make sure the services remained stable. When she felt enough peace of mind to leave she walked out the building and bought a large latte from the shop one block away. Then she took a self driving car to the nearest Hyperloop station in Santa Monica.

As she approached the entrance to the station a large golden retriever jumped on her out of nowhere. The joy of a small pupper all over its dog face. She lost the grip on her coffee cup which crashed on the tiled floor making a mess.

– Gobi! No! A young man came running after the dog which was now licking coffee from the floor.

– I'm so sorry. He got loose and...

– It's ok. If you wanted my number you just had to ask. She said while she was cleaning coffee from the sleeve of her jacket.

– Oh... I didn't... He laughed.

– You two take care, ok? She pet the dog as a goodbye and started walking in.

The man didn't know what to say, the joke caught him by surprise. He actually didn't plan that to get her number. But now he was thinking he probably should have asked.

She approached the tollgate to pay for the ride when another man walked in front of her and passed through the gate in a hurry. He almost pushed her out the line. The man who just walked past her took the last seat in the capsule. Now she had to wait for the next capsule to arrive. Luckily there was a new capsule every 5 minutes. She was standing there at the front of the line when she noticed the man's face through the small window. He was looking at her with a clear face of disgust.

What's wrong with him!? I don't even know him. She thought. Shortly after the doors closed and the capsule departed. Now the man looked forward as the capsule started moving.

She entered the capsule #1027 with other 19 passengers. She opened the compartment above her seat, put her bag in and closed it. As she sat her wrist watch reminder her it was time for her cancer shot. She was diagnosed right after she was born. The doctors checked her genetic profile and identified some inherited defects in her genetic machinery. This defects would rise with age and very probably become a form of thyroid cancer. Knowing that she had to visit a genetist every two years. Just a few months back, after her last checkup, her genetist suggested she should start taking treatment. It consisted of a shot every 12 hours for the next 16 months. That should be more than enough to prevent a cellular revolt from happening, said the doctor as he smiled.

She pulled out the MK-20 (Medizinisches Handwerk) from her jacket's inner pocket. It was a tubular device the size of a large permanent marker. Half of the device was transparent, similar to glass, but it was actually made of carbon nanoparticles that made it really hard to break. She could see it was almost full with purified water. The other half had silver metallic looks and had a small display panel. The display read:

"CT117 - hypodermic - 1200 µg"

Of course CT meant cancer treatment and 117 was the catalog number assigned to the type of thyroid cancer she was predisposed. She uncovered one of her shoulders pushing the jacket down and placed the metallic base of the device against her arm. The device pushed microscopic particles through her skin while making a pneumatic sound. At the same time $21 dollars were transferred from her account to the bank account of the medical company in Switzerland. The Hoffnung medical company held the patent of this molecule. The treatment was costly indeed, but she opened a savings account as soon as she started working, knowing she might need the money for it someday.

At least there are no needles in this thing. She saw her father take a similar but more painful treatment for years before the new molecule was developed. Since then she associated the needles with the pain in her father's face. But it was actually the aggressive chemicals what caused the pain. There was no pain for her, not even a little discomfort or side effects. It always made her sad thinking about all the pain her father had to endure before recovering completely.

She put on her earplugs and pressed the crown on her watch. Then closed her eyes and listened to the music. She boarded the capsule to San Francisco at 7:45 that Friday. In 35 minutes they should reach the Sacramento station. She planned to take a nap all the way there. But before the third song finished playing the emergency brakes hit in.

The capsule hit a large metallic object inside the tunnel when the speed was still above 130mph. The violent crash actioned the airbags and killed the lights inside. When she woke up she felt an unbearable pain in all her body that was stronger in the head. She took a hand to her head and found blood at her fingertips. She tried opening her eyes not without a burning pain. When she could see something she noticed the other passengers crawling in pain on the floor and the front of the cabin destroyed. Something really heavy hit them. But she could not figure out what it was.

She pulled the MK-20 out of her pocket and turned the metallic crown on the device. She chose the painkillers section and found:

"Morphine - hypodermic - 30mg"

When she pressed the only metallic button on the device it read "Emergency use only. LAPD will be notified". Even though it was an emergency she didn't want the citatory and the long tedious interrogatory that came with it. The police always considered its use unjustified unless you lost a limb. She looked for other options and found:

"Diclofenac - hypodermic - 75mg"

She could not increase the amount, 75 mg was the maximum allowed without prescription.

– Come on... that won't even cut a headache.

She took it anyway. The MK-20 drew some water into the metallic chamber and fused the water particles into an infinitely small soup of quarks and gluons. Then created and arranged the atoms into the molecule of choice. It all happened in a few seconds. When the medicament was ready and tested safe from impurities the words in the screen turned green. She took the shot. The painkiller particles were wrapped into transport molecules for slow absorption. She wasn't going to feel better until at least 20 minutes.

When the emergency services arrived they rescued everyone from the capsule. No one was seriously hurt. Only an elder man and a kid had to be transferred by air to the closest hospital to put them in observation and made some studies. They took both hurt persons and the boy's mother in an air ambulance, a large square shaped drone with clear panels, along with the two rescuers who were the ones who got first at the crash site.

– I'm going to prescribe you a better pain killer. You should feel better in one or two days. If you still have any pain visit your closest ER room. I just updated your medical file.

– Thank you.

– Please give me your MK for a second.

– Sure.

The rescatist transferred the prescription to the MK using his mobile and signed it with his fingertip.

– Here you go. You're free to go now.

– Thanks again...

– ...Rose. Do you have any questions about the information I just gave you?

– Rose, do you know what happened?

Rose Alvarez looked at the cop standing next to them.

– Your capsule was hit by the drivetrain of another capsule.

– Another capsule? Do you mean, the one in front of us? That's not possible, it must have been several miles away.

– I'm sorry, that's all I can tell you.

– Please, follow me. Said the cop waiting next to them.

She was scouted to a self driving car along with some of the other passengers. One of the officers set the destination in the car computer and closed the doors.

– How are you dear? Asked the woman sitting next to her.

– I'm ok. Are you ok? I saw they took your husband in the ambulance.

– I'm ok dear, just some bruises. My husband got some cuts, some metal shards got into the cabin when we crashed. The doctors said he's going to be ok, that all his wounds were superficial. But they wanted to be sure. He's getting a fully body scan.

She said all that like trying to convince herself that everything was fine.

– I'm sorry to hear that. I hope your husband gets better soon.

– Thanks, he will be allright. He was conscious when the put him in the AV. He was even making jokes to try to calm me down. They company is taking me to the hospital as soon we reach the station.

– Why didn't they take you in the ambulance?

– They said there AV could not take us all, there's a weight limit. I was more worried about the small boy, so I asked his mother to go with them. She told me she was going to keep an eye on James in return. She looked pretty nervous to me, she reminded me of my daughter.

– You look pretty calm yourself. She told the woman, trying to give her some peace of mind.

– Oh, I don't think I can cry more. She laughed nervously.

All the passengers were talking and discussing about what just happened. That was the first time there was an accident in the loop since it started operations 17 years ago.

– It's in the news! Said a young man sitting in the back of the car. He shared the video to the car's screen so everyone could watch.

The reporter was showing the picture of a caucasian man in his mid 50s, white hair. In the photo he looked like a normal business man. Then a video showing the interior of a capsule identical to the one they were on an hour ago. According to the reporter a man named Mark Pearce boarded the capsule #1026 at 19:40 hours from Los Angeles to San Francisco. He was carrying what appeared to be an explosive device that was not be detected by the instruments at the station.

In the video the man stands up in the middle of the capsule holding a suitcase. He turned to one of the security cameras and yelled "Give our country back! In the name of the lord!" before the screen goes into a blinding white and then nothing.

– The police is yet to release more details as the investigation continues. The reporter concluded.

She recognized him, he was that weird man at the station. She felt an intense vertigo. An excited conversation bursted inside the car until a tall man asked everyone to calm down. They didn't talk for the rest of the ride for the sake of the grown woman who bursted into tears.

– We are ok, don't worry, you will be with your husband in no time. The rest of the passengers remained silent, absorbed in their own thoughts.

She got at her apartment at 11:19 pm. The cat visibly excited meowing at her as if thinking she was never coming back. She took off her jacket picking the MK from the pocket, the grabbed the cat. She walked to the window and touched the glass which turned from an opaque gray to crystal clear. The drones going up and down the building with their luminous and colorful ads. The lights in the street looked new in her eyes. Like it was the first time she saw that view. She sat in the puff facing the window with the cat still in her arms. Then looked at the MK-20 in her hand. The turned the crown and selected:

"Cannabinoids - Oral - use responsibly"

Then she pressed the button and after a few seconds the metallic base opened like a diaphragm releasing warm vapor. After a few minutes of smoking she started feeling noticeably relaxed. But she could not stop thinking about the man with the white hair and what he said in the recording. Reema was afraid that after many years of relative peace a new threat would appear in her lifetime. One that caused her some much nightmares when she was a girl, when her parents begged for political asylum in the US trying to escape from the claws of death. The war that made her home country forever uninhabitable back in 2021.

Now, a new terrorist group called the N3K claimed responsibility for the attack. What they pursue is to restore the political privileges of the white minority, and to deport the immigrants and their offspring to the nuclear wasteland the US and Russia created together.


End file.
